Niji
by ezyl
Summary: Sanada Genichirou may or may not be interested in older women.


**Niji, means rainbow. That's the only note I'd like to make.**

**Disclaimers apply, and there is a warning for anything vaguely resembling pedophilia, and a Platty Pair tidbit. The pairing is SanadaOC, and don't get freaked just 'cause she's his World Literature/History professor. Nothing really happens.**

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"_The point being, we found your application the most fitting towards the description, a clear, focused mind with goals set," the man continued, pushing his spectacles further up the broad bridge of his nose, "Tachikiri Mai-san, I'd like you to take the job."_

_Her face changed –only a fractional alteration– and allowed a curt, well-groomed smile to appear, "I am honored to teach at such a fine school."_

"_And I am honored to welcome you to Rikkai Dai Fuzoku," he stood up, extended a perfunctory hand, the kind that wasn't meant to be taken._

_She shook it, surprising him at how firm her grip was._

It wasn't completely far-fetched to declare that that was the beginning of Rikkai's new World History professor, Tachikiri Mai. Twenty-three years old, freshly graduated from Tokyo College, she who hit the school by storm and three hundred pounds of extra homework.

Tachikiri stood at a demanding five foot four inches, a couple shorter than the average teacher, but her personality certainly made up for most of it, perhaps even more. She wore a pair of black-rimmed, angular frames that stuck-out a couple centimeters farther past her face, a tight smirk, and pink lipstick that only showed when the light reflected just-so. In fact, she was really quite pretty, when one had gotten over the initial shock of her personality. Her hair was always in a bun, never let down unless in the safe comforts of home. Her clothes were perfectly mismatched, dress shirts and shorts fitting together simply because they weren't supposed to, causing the casual bystander to consider the miraculousness of it all, because they showed-up on the front cover of the next edition of _Elle _when she was done. Papers were kept pristine, never with coffee stains and odd cookie crumbs like the math teacher, her desk was spotless and her file cabinet organized by color code, alphabet, _and_ the Dewey decimal system. She would laugh when spoken to, sarcastic when laughed at, witty and dry with everyone but to those above her, and playful to a point where she would confuse more than delight.

She was admired by faculty and student alike.

And so it was obviously the reason why she was assigned to the class with the hardest students to teach, the _Advanced Placement World Literature_ course. The curriculum housed the most feared, esteemed, and dangerous third years, the very ones that scare the ever-loving crap out of any unwary teacher, nervous student teacher, and keep the freshmen at least a mile radius away.

Take Masaharu Niou, for one. He despised knowledge of any sort, save for ones regarding deception, tomfoolery, and the female anatomy and possible ways of penetrating it. And yet, to every instructor's dismay, he'd always manage to come out top, or at least close-to-top scores every time midterms rolled around. The fangirls labeled him a _tortured sexy genius_, but it was really just Yagyuu Hiroshi giving him leg-ups every time they needed to study, using creative means that shouldn't be mentioned anywhere except in a pillow book. (And perhaps not even _there_, especially during Niou's leather/chain-cosplaying phase.)

Or the actual Gentleman, Yagyuu himself, an observer of all things glorious in literature, as all gentlemen are brought up to be. He excelled in Victor Hugo, some Shakespeare (_The Tempest _was his favorite), and dashes of La Fontaine, Baudelaire-when-he-was-being-slightly-naughty. And when the contemporary unit kicked-in, veering towards snippets of Singer and Salinger. He was every teacher's go-to for poetry recitation, his clear voice pronouncing words in its foreign tongue perfectly, the pitch and tone balanced, just like his golf stroke. But his fierce, cold and well-guarded politeness kept people second-guessing themselves in front of him, sweating over invisible crumbs on their face when Yagyuu gave them something other than a blank stare.

Perhaps Yanagi Renji was a fine example, too. Not a _single_ piece of fact or date –even the ones that were in the Dark Ages, so that Tachikiri wonders how Yanagi had learned it all–,_ one_ line of a strophe, could go unmemorized in the hands –or rather, brain– of the extravagant data master. And he was a known blackmail artist, admired by even Seigaku's Fuji Syuusuke and former best friend of Inui Sadaharu. The teachers gave him a wide berth, after the previous incident where World History teacher resigned with three muscle strains in his neck from overexertion through the snapping-of-the-neck whenever Yanagi stood up in class to analyze texts.

These were the best, of the best. They gave their submission to no one, save for perhaps Yukimura Seiichi, their tennis mentor, who had decided to drop the World History class when he was hospitalized.

But, even before Yukimura, the absolute summit of the third years fell into the slot of Sanada Genichirou. _Goes without saying,_ the students would all chime-in when asked who was the smartass. Sanada would never leave anything uninterrogated, and anything short of his harsh standards he would either dispose of or conquer. He prized perfection, strived for the best and most integral way of dealing with things, and it didn't harm much that he could swing a racket like a fiend, too.

He was admired by everyone in the school, and held the third-highest rate of confessions and askings-out by the ladies (the first was Yukimura, the second Niou).

It was a complete mystery as to why Sanada was completely single. Much as the separate fangirl groups at Rikkai cheered them on, much as the loner, outstanding beauties –one who'd even caught the attention of _Yukimura_– stood and preened (sometimes even putting on those bad, playin'-hard-to-get attitudes) at the sidelines and eyed their target with malicious glints, Sanada never wavered. And even after all his teammates, the ones more drawn towards their doubles' partner included, had gone and started to ask out the female population, Sanada would not conform to their recklessness, would practice his kendo by himself and sleep and dream and think by himself.

Some speculated that the boy had some secret affair going on with Yukimura, and the truth was that there had been one, a year ago, but it was ended a day later when Sanada found his friend trying to seduce Marui in the pool. A form of seclusion and bitter anger might have been the reason that Sanada no longer gave it much more thought.

Some concluded that he had no heart. After all, someone so perfect, so brilliant, how could he actually come down from his godly position and ask out one of _them_? Unthinkable.

And some would just shake their heads, smile and say that there's always an exception, the guy who just isn't willing to find any old person to go around with.

To be completely honest –and not that anyone would actually believe it– Sanada kept his faith in true love. True love, soul mates, a little destiny, if you must. He believed in finding someone who you could talk with, laugh with, share memories with—not just _sleep _with, for God's sake.

And true love came with its price. The price of loneliness for the first half of your life, when no one shows up and you begin to dismay. And Sanada had to push the dreaded thought out of his mind. That no one had ever fit the taste of the stone-cold, presumed-to-be-gay fukubuchou of the tennis team, and no one ever would.

That was before Tachikiri Mai, of course, who had very nearly experienced an epiphany-caused tachycardia on Sanada-kun's analysis of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

"_Full marks will be given for the first one who can stand up, name all the wonders of the Ancient World, give a detailed analysis, and supply sufficient vocabulary," she smiled, looking at the class._

_The boy stood up, adjusted his tie, while the rest of the class had started grinning madly and slapping him on the back, while Mai's curiosity grew._

"_T__he __Seven Wonders of the Ancient World__ is a well known list of seven remarkable constructions of classical antiquity. It was based on guide-books popular among Hellenic tourists and only includes works located around the Mediterranean rim. Later lists include those for the Medieval World and the Modern World. The number seven was chosen because the Greeks believed it to be magical_. _The traditional list, though not the first or last, was made by Philo of Byzantium and written in 225 BC in his work 'On the Seven Wonders'. Earlier and later lists, written by the historian Herodotus and the architect Callimachus of Cyrene at the Museum of Alexandria, survive only as references…"_

He amazed her. The way he positioned his words, the flow of it, all matched his perfectly calm nature and uninterrupted thought process (of course, she'd never seen his lesser side, but that wouldn't have mattered, anyway).

Their student-teacher relationship had only grown affectionate, along the year, when Sanada wouldn't just always come out on top with smug grin, but he actually gave it thought. She found soul in the way he wrote, and often kept him after class to discuss it. Not a single one of these conversations were meaningless, and not a single one of them occurred without Tachikiri-sensei walking home late, in awe of Sanada's thinking. And it was funny, because she didn't feel this relaxed when talking to anyone. This boy, who always took off his cap in her presence, who never said a single rude thing to her, she found herself seeing him more as a friend than a student.

Somewhere along the way, the relationship turned more companion-wise.

"I think you'd like my library," she laughed, once, when he was talking about his collection of old poetry.

"Would I?" he asked.

"I think you would."

There was a small spark of a smile on her lips as she invited him to her house to study. Before her college days, Mai had been the biggest bookworm in her high school. She gathered texts with passion, read through them again and again without tire. Her parents found it quite amusing, a young girl with a gigantic library of the best books to be found anywhere, spending all her free time curled-up on a lazyboy, heavily-burdened eyes whizzing over sentences and paragraphs without stop (she had to get special treatment for her eyes, too, to refrain from going blind).

Mai served him herbal tea, spoke with him much more confidently in her own home, even took out that pesky bun. She gazed at him when he wasn't looking at just sitting down and reading the books, a serenity in his eyes that she had never seen in a junior-high school student.

"There's a page missing in this book."

She froze, leaned forward, just a bit, saw his puzzled face.

He snapped his head up, saw her eyes just inches away from his face, and he had never noticed how pretty his teacher really looked, with her hair cascading over her shoulders, a quirked smile, and a thoughtful glance.

She couldn't help it, but examine his face more carefully. They looked very strong, and yet there was a simple delicateness to it all. He was so…innocent. Yes, that was the word. She peered closer into his face.

Closer, closer…

BANG.

He had dropped the book, just as her phone beeped. There was a staff meeting scheduled for tomorrow.

"I-I think I have to go home, now," he muttered.

The moment was shattered and brushed away with the wind.

When Sanada left, she couldn't believe that she had done. This kind of thinking was uncalled for.

She found herself thinking of him too much. Too much. Thinking of his serious face, his dedication to everything he did, his deep, resonant voice, every quality she had searched long and far for, in the world, she had seen in her star pupil.

Tachikiri Mai was in love with Sanada Genichirou. And when she realized it, she had already been in love with him for a whole year.

But it was impossible. She was old. About eight years older than him. She didn't know if she was more mature than him, but she knew his age and most certainly realized her own. And if only she'd been a few years younger, she could pass off as a high-school girl interested in younger guys…

No. She wouldn't think about it that way.

To make things worse, his little sister, a brave girl, came up to her next, a giant frown on her face during Mai's only prep-period in the day.

"Tachikiri-san."

She raised a brow, "I was informed that the students of Rikkai Dai were supposed to refer to all teachers as sensei. Whatever happened to you?"

"Fine, then, sensei," the girl snapped, "I'm Sanada's sister. I want you to get your hands off my brother."

"What do you mean?" the woman tried to mask her heated-face with one of concern.

"You know exactly what the hell I'm talking about, you nasty pedophile."

She left.

And she began to realize how utterly wrong, how completely stupid she was. She couldn't like her student. It wasn't planned-out to be that way.

_You nasty pedophile…_

--

"You're…resigning?" It was the first words he had said to her since that day.

"Sanada-kun, don't get me wrong," she laughed warmly, "I really, really like you. You're my brightest student, kind and considerate of your teammates. You're one of a kind, and I hope you'll stay that way."

He nodded, cap tilting back and forth like a metronome, still perplexed.

"I really _do_ like you. Remember that."

Mai paused.

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye," he said nervously.

And the woman zipped-up her briefcase, packed all the color-coded files and exited the doors of Rikkai Dai Fuzoku, mind set and no longer looking back.

She hoped he would understand how much she really meant that.

After, she didn't remember crying, but a few lonely tears slipped down anyway.

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**A/N: The stuff on the Seven Wonders was taken from Wiki. I'm not skilled, sorry.**

**Thanks for reading. Hopefully I haven't scarred you too much, that you would leave a review. And if you flame because of the pair, I will surely hunt you down.**


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